Interested in an MSc or
PhD?

Admissions for 2013 are now closed. Admissions for 2014 will open around Oct 2013.

I'm currently looking for highly motivated
students with strong interests in databases, systems, and
multicore. A smattering of algorithms, operating systems and
computer architecture never hurts, either. Experience with
C/C++ and general coding ability, willingness to cross
boundaries into other areas in search of solutions, and a
focus on implementing real systems, are all key indicators
of a good match; however, an ability to pick up new tools
and concepts quickly is more important than exhaustive
knowledge in any particular area. Potential research areas
include:

Designs which simplify or enhance key database
operations for performance and predictability

Hardware augmentation for database engines to improve
performance, reduce power, or close the gap between best-
and worst-case behavior.

Research:

My research
focuses on high performance database systems in the context
of modern hardware advances, especially multicore computing
and solid state (flash) storage. I am also interested in
low-level systems topics that impact database engine design,
including computer architecture, operating systems,
concurrency, and storage management. I also have
interests/hobbies in areas such as programming languages and
compilers, parallel programming approaches such as
transactional memory, and finding ways to increase the
broader appeal of database engines for "everyone else."

My CV is available upon request.

Projects I am, or have been involved in include:

Bionic DBMS

As dark
silicon looms, watts per operation will soon become the
primary performance metric for database systems. Time per
operation, while still important, will become a constraint
to obey while attempting to minimize power utilization. As
a result, custom hardware support for database engines,
already emerging, will proliferate, leading over time to a
hardware-software hybrid DBMS. This shift poses a problem
for database engines, because they are historically very
unfriendly to hardware support. This project aims to
rethink the design of the DBMS from the ground up, in the
context of dark silicon and potential for custom hardware,
to achieve unprecedented power savings while preserving or
even increasing performance.

I collaborate
with members of the DIAS lab at EPFL (headed
by my PhD advisor, Natassa). The lab's focus
centers on multicore hardware, flash storage
for database engines, and scientific
databases. The lab has also released Shore-MT,
a scalable version of the SHORE storage
manager from U. Wisconsin (see DIAS web page
for details).

System-on-chip (SoC) designs have evolved into highly parallel
and heterogeneous architectures. This trend presents new
challenges when designing and modeling new systems. My masters
research focused on fast and accurate modeling of asynchronous
events to allow the exploration of scheduling approaches.

Publications:

Most of my publications are available at DBLP (see here);
some new and/or non-database papers appear below: